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Friday, February 14, 2014

Happy Valentine's Day!

We have been working the last week or so on a special Valentine's Day project. First, students had to write a Valentine message in Google docs.

Next, I recorded each student wishing their Valentine recipient a happy Valentine's Day. Each movie was uploaded to YouTube and the privacy setting was changed to "anyone with link can view" (meaning it can't be searched or found, so the movies could remain a bit of a surprise!) I emailed each student their link and they went to goo.gl, shortened the URL and created a QR Code. Then, students copied the URL for the QR Code and pasted it into their document. We printed all docs and QR codes and glued them to our Valentine greeting.

A QR Code is a type of matrix bar code. QR stands for “quick response” and the code is able to hold significantly more data than a traditional bar code. Additionally, the code can link directly to text, a website, a telephone number, a vCard, a video and more!

We have been using QR Codes in the classroom all year, as it is one of my favorite learning and teaching tools! I did a TED Talk about QR Codes last year and still find them to be extremely engaging. The QR scanner app we use in the classroom is called i-nigma, but there are many other free QR scanner apps available. QR codes can be scanned using any smartphone and most tablets. If you don't have access to any of those devices, they can also be scanned on a Mac or PC using QReader, QuickMark or QR Code Reader.

If you have any challenges scanning your child's special Valentine QR Code, please shoot me an email and I will gladly help!